


i don't see what anyone can see in anyone else... but you

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Coulson is a coward, Coulson is an oblivious fool, Developing Relationship, Episode Related, F/M, Fluff, Guilt, Melinda May knows what's up, Older Man/Younger Woman, POV Phil Coulson, Pining, SO MUCH FLUFF, Skye and Coulson bond over French cinema, Skye gets what she wants, Unresolved Sexual Tension, a lot of pining, more introspective stuff, yeah i will never stop using X Files quotes because Skye and Coulson are my new Mulder and Scully
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 10:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2146689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just for the record, Director Coulson does not gaze at Agent Skye.</p>
<p>(Written for the prompt at <a href="http://fuckyeahskoulson.tumblr.com/">Fuck Yeah Skoulson!</a>: <i>pining</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i don't see what anyone can see in anyone else... but you

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Moldy Peaches.

**one**  
He's confused, that is all.

Perhaps it was that damn sceptre, when it went through his chest, perhaps it changed him in ways the doctors can't detect. This has never happened before. He's just confused. Something about meeting her right after his recovery, something about the way he has latched onto her beliefs and her story. It's not real. It's just a strange infatuation due to circumstance.

He's confused – she is an orphan and she looks like she needs a break, he would be heartless if he didn't feel anything.

No one has given her a chance before. What he feels must be pity, not desire.

It has taken him the longest time to think she's beautiful, too. He noticed it, of course, intellectually – because he needed to, as a profiler, he needed to asses her weaknesses and strengths, something about the way she carried herself, _a pretty girl who knows it and has learned how to use it to her advantage_ was his first thought, but then amended, it wasn't to her advantage, she learned how to use it for protection against the world, but there wasn't anything personal in his acknowledgement of her appeal. And now, well, he can't unsee it; she's not pretty, she's beautiful – fierce and smart and loyal and those eyes, those eyes are _torture_. He remembers the first time he thought so, after the Miles Lydon debacle, in his office, as she was telling him the real reason she had joined SHIELD. As she was telling him how she'll never stop looking for her parents, challenging him despite the tears.

Coulson felt jealous of her resolve.

And then he thought about those eyes.

But he's not a teenager – he doesn't go around thinking about girls' lovely faces.

And he definitely can't go around feeling something bitter in the mouth when he talks to the boyfriend, just because the guy betrayed her.

Even so.

He can't turn it off, he can only ignore it and try to do better by Skye, because he needs to, because she needs him to – Skye who deserves better than to be oogled at by her middle aged boss. Skye who has put trust he probably doesn't deserve on him, Skye who has opened up to him and accepted his help after a lifetime of thinking she had to do things on her own. If he keeps thinking about her like that he is going to stain that gesture of hers, that faith. And he's done a lot of that already, hiding things from her. When she hugs him, thanking him for what he's told her about her past, she doesn't know he's betraying her in a worse manner than she ever did him, when she hugs him and he lets her even though it's all a lie – that makes him feel bad enough without the treacherous pang of desire uncoiling inside him as she presses her body against him and he almost holds her back (the shape of her back under the palm of his hand).

He wishes he wasn't lying to her, so he could be free to hug her too.

This has to stop. This is going to stop.

 

**two**  
He's grateful, that is all.

She saved him. He'd be dead or at least still lost in that darkness if she hadn't found him.

Her voice.

He hadn't known how much he loved her voice until it was the thing that tore him away from the dark and now, now that he is safe and in the light again, that's the only thing he ever wants to hear, her voice.

He would be dead if it wasn't for her – he learns that later, when he comes around completely, and he learns about how hard it was for her to find where Centipede was keeping him because of the electronic bracelet. He kicks himself mentally. It would have served him right, dying in the atomic desert because he pretended not to trust Skye, because of some misguided sense of propriety or arrogance. He should have never put it on her – just because he had been hurt in his stupid pride. He doesn't quite understand how Skye circumnavigated the bracelet to find him and according to May she hasn't offered much detail to the team. She keeps things very close to her chest, in that sense they are alarmingly alike. 

He won't ask her, just as he knows Skye won't press further when he refuses to tell her exactly what happened back in that room. Her face tells him she doesn't quite believe him but she is trying very hard to. When did she become so good at telling when he's lying? When did he start noticing she could? He should be ashamed of letting a subordinate see him at such a low point, vulnerable and helpless. Somehow he isn't – he wishes he could tell her more, show her more, if she could stand it, if _he_ could stand it.

He stares at her way too long. He needs to stop doing that.

He doesn't want this conversation to end. Not even this one.

It's easy to think you have a crush on someone who has just saved your life, Coulson reasons. It's all he has now, reason, because the other thing... the other thing is not cooperating with his theories at all. The other thing is the way he doesn't want his conversations with Skye to end, even the bad ones.

Her voice.

It's easy to love the voice that carried you out of hell. That doesn't mean anything else.

 

**three**  
He's afraid, that is all.

Her life is slipping through his hands and his hands are not strong enough, solid enough to stop it. He is useless and he is afraid and it's easy to mistake those things for attraction, even for love.

It's the shock, just that, he tells himself.

When a doctor tells you there's nothing to be done it's easy to get confused about what that sharp splinter of pain travelling through your veins really means.

_We're her family_ he had said, what he really meant was: she's my family, I can't lose her.

When someone's blood is staining your clothes and the smell doesn't seem to go away no matter how much you wash it's easy to mistake your feelings for something they are not. That's what happened to Coulson, from the moment he saw red on Quinn's knuckles, and all through his desperate attempts at finding a cure.

Even when she is unconscious on that bed he tries to look at her as much as he can. He misses her. That sinking feeling in his stomach is fear and guilt, nothing more.

But when she is safe and recovering – when she is sleeping peacefully on the medpod bed and he's sitting by her side for who knows how many hours on end, even days – the feeling doesn't go away and it eats at him that it doesn't.

"You almost look disappointed that I'm alive," she says, lightly. She still looks so weak. He has probably tired her out by explaining everything (well, not everything, not yet – _soon_ he promises) that has happened since she was shot.

"No, I'm –" he tries to give her a little smile. "Of course I'm not disappointed."

"Good. Because you've been super weird since I woke up."

She raises a tentative eyebrow.

He looks at her. Pale and exhausted but blissfully alive. But who knows what else. He is so scared of what he might have done to her. Scared of having been selfish. It's easy to mistake fear with longing. It's easy to be selfish about this as well, to think that just having her alive and near is enough and worth it. He stands up.

"You're leaving?" she asks, and maybe she is too weak to mask her disappointment but she sounds so hurt by the idea. And her face look so sad at the prospect.

He doesn't want to leave. That's the last thing he wants to do. He wants to stay here in this room as long as it takes until she recovers completely. He wants to take her hand in his and make sure it's true, she's alive. 

"I'll be back in a couple of days," he tells her. Skye frowns at the stretch of time. He can't tell her everything yet but he needs to tell her something aproximating to the truth. "I need to talk to some people about what just happened."

He's asking for permission and Skye seems to understand that because she gives him a serious nod that means she is letting him go.

He doesn't want her to let him go. His fingers make the motion, the start of the motion, he _aches_ to touch her hand. He had wanted to, these last couple of days guarding her bed in silence. But he doesn't finish the gesture.

 

**four**  
He's relieved, that is all.

She's all right. Whatever happened with Ward – and after he'd rescued Skye from him they had locked themselves in a hotel room, waiting for the team, and talking it out – she has been adamant that he didn't hurt her. There's more to the story, he suspects (she has talked about the hard drive and about Mike Peterson, mainly, she hasn't talked about what it felt like, finding Eric Koenig's body; she definitely hasn't talked about holding hands with a killer) but it's too soon not to let Skye let it go if that's what she needs right now.

He's so relieved that she is okay that everything else – and he means _everything_ else – sort of fades into a background of meaninglessness. The only thing that matters is that she is sitting across from him, whole and safe and still willing to fight the good fight.

And it's strange but Skye's courage (the kind he can't imagine himself having) makes him want to be brave in a different way.

Tonight it feels like he could throw caution to the air and tell her everything.

The way he's looking at her, he realizes, is new.

There is something approaching calm in the way he wants her right now, like today he was given a lesson on what really matters, and it's none of the self-recriminating crap he's been using to deny he wants her. And it's not the protocols and the rules or all the _should_ s and _shouldn't_ s.

If this were possible – if Skye were possible for someone like him – he would forget about his own misapprehensions and he would take her hand without fear and lead her into his room and figure out what it means, what he's been feeling all these months, make love to her and wake up next to her tomorrow morning. It's a simple enough plan and it's all he wants right now. It's so simple and yet the most complicated thing he's ever felt.

But _almost possible_ is not really possible and at the end of the day, even a day like this, they are who they are. He doesn't want to hurt her anymore.

He can't stop looking at her, though.

His silly routine with the chocolate bar, even he wonders what that was about. He meant to buy another one for Skye but somehow he has ended up preferring to share his. Part of him knew she would like that. Tonight he just wants to make her smile.

"Thanks," she says, her lips quirked in a warm curve around the word.

The way she's looking at him... 

It's almost like she... 

Of couse he is beginning to see things now, he's just imagining it. Skye is just as relieved as he is, and grateful, he has just saved her from hell not mere hours ago, of course she is going to be looking at him _like that_. It doesn't actually mean anything. It doesn't mean what it means when he does it, because he's doing it now, the relief of having her near and safe blocking every filter he might have used before. But in Skye's case? It doesn't mean that. A matter of circumstance, that is all. He can't start thinking it means something – he can't start thinking Skye might be feeling the same. He promised some time ago he wouldn't go down that path.

"Nice night."

It is a nice night and she is alive and safe and _here_ and that is enough. It doesn't have to mean anything else. Just this moment is enough for him. Well, it kind of has to be.

 

**six**  
He's pathetic, that is all.

He thought things would get better once they settled down in the Playground, and he'd somehow get over it, or the worst parts of it. The opposite seems to be true these days.

He's pathetic _and_ hopeless. He's fifty and the Director of SHIELD, the fact that his whole day brightens if his arms accidentally brushes with Skye's during the morning meeting is not just alarming, it's downright sad.

And looking at her – he has to make a conscious effort to avoid doing it too much.

Looking at Skye these days it's like permanently having a word on the tip of your tongue, a word he can never remember.

He tries to bury it in work but Skye is a big part of that work and their professional relationship has always been rather intense, anyway. That doesn't help.

He decides the sane thing to do is to pull back a bit, keep his distance from her, at least personally. 

He tries to avoid situations like this one right here, when he walks into the tv room and there's only Skye there, sitting on the couch cross-legged and lighting up when she sees him.

"Where is everyone else?" he asks. He is understandably thrilled at the prospect of being alone with Skye (even though he is alone with her all the time, he _is_ pathetic) and at the same time very much not.

"I think Simmons and Trip have already gone to bed," she says. "Fitz is showing May some new material for her suit, they are testing stuff in the lab."

"Okay then. I should continue... mm..."

He tries to walk away.

"Come on, Mr Director, you've worked enough for today," she says, grabbing his arm. "Stay and watch the movie with me."

He looks down at Skye's fingers around his forearm. He sighs, which she interprets as being all about her insistence and as signal that she's won. When she lets him go Coulson sits on the couch by her side.

"What are you watching?" he asks, looking at the screen. Something black and white, 1940s by the looks of it. He didn't know Skye was interested in that sort of thing.

She sits up, leaning closer to him.

" _Children of Paradise_. I had never seen it but I knew the story, that it was made during the Nazi occupation and many of the extras were Resistance agents. Isn't that cool? The composer and the designer were Jewish and had to work in secret. And you know the most amazing thing? The director had to hide reels of the movie from the Nazis, in his house, under the mattress or something, waiting for the Liberation of Paris so that people could see the whole film."

"Mm." He thinks that perhaps, given their own situation, obsessing about Nazi-occupied France isn't the healthiest thing in the world. Skye doesn't really let anything go. "I didn't know you were interested in this stuff."

"I'm interested in a lot of stuff," she replies quickly, almost defensively.

And well, to be honest Coulson would like nothing more than to do this _a lot_ , sit with Skye on the couch and make their way through the golden era of French cinema. But that's precisely the problem and why he has been trying not to do _this_ for two months.

It's almost like Skye can tell what he is thinking, though.

"It's been a while since we've had some quality time alone," she says in a light tone but meaning it. He didn't know she had been noticing it too. 

"I've been busy," he says but it comes out more like a question.

"Yeah I know," Skye replies. A beat, then she chews the inside of her cheek, looking at the movie. He watches her flex her toes. For a moment he feels the urge to wrap his fingers around her ankle, touch that strip of skin exposed below her pajama pants. Then she speaks again: "But I miss you."

He looks up.

"I'm sorry, I should have –" he doesn't know what he should have done. He has no fucking clue what he should be doing. He knows what he _shouldn't_ be feeling.

"It's okay," she says. "Don't worry about me. Like, _ever_. You're stressed enough as it is. Yes, don't make that weird face, I can tell. But you can relax, I'm not going to be something that adds to your stress."

After all this time he still wonders exactly how Skye manages to do _that_.

I miss you too, he thinks.

He decides his peace of mind doesn't matter; he wants to be with her, even if it's just like this.

 

**six**  
He's lonely, that is all.

He's beginning to feel the sharp bite of it. Perhaps it doesn't really have to do with Skye, he hopes against hope. Except he doesn't really want anyone else. It's about not having been intimate with anyone since he was brought back from the dead. Except not everyone would do. If it did, if it was just an itch to scratch, he could have taken care of it. He never had any trouble on that front, in the past. He wonders if that has changed too. This kind of loneliness is very particular and has a fixed, if impossible, solution. He doesn't want the detachment of brief encounters anymore. That detachment was so very important to him once, to be carefully concealed and carefully covered, and now he doesn't understand why. He doesn't want to hide. He wants to open up. He's never been tender. He thinks he could be tender now. He thinks he would be scared – everything about Skye and what she inspires in him is scary – but he thinks he would be brave. He would give her everything he so greedily kept to himself for years and years.

He will never know, of course, but he thinks he would like himself, if he could be with her.

He catches Skye doing some morning routine with Trip, showing him the latest moves May has taught her. She's become quite proficent. He'd say he's proud except there's no surprise here. Skye is a hard worker when she decides she wants something – if she hasn't accomplished much in life is only because she has been too afraid of wanting things. The irony is Coulson gets that now. He watches her throw her head back when she laughs because Trip has his back on the mats for once, and Skye has her hair in a comfortable ponytail and a sheen of sweat covers her visible skin. Coulson feels bereft of something he can't quite name.

"Are you listening to me?" May asks him.

Actually, I am, Coulson thinks. He's perfectly capable of daydreaming and at the same time listening to May telling him the equipment damaged in the last mission and how much Fitz thinks it would cost to replace it.

"I am," he tells her without looking at her. "We don't have those kinds of funds right now. Fitz will have to wait."

May sort of sighs.

"It's my own fault. I should have known better than interrupting you when you are gazing at Skye."

He turns around, frowns at her. He should be wiser than to ask. "What do you mean?"

May gives him a blank stare.

"I'll talk to Fitz," she says. "But he's not going to like the delay."

"He's welcome to pay for it himself then," he says, with a pathetic attempt at humor. "It's not like we broke his gadgets on purpose."

May smiles. "Let me talk to him."

"Thank you." She turns to leave. "By the way... May?"

"Yes?"

"I do not gaze at Skye."

 

**seven**  
He's in love, that is all.

There has been enough of calling it some other thing or pretending it wasn't; Coulson might have acted like a coward for a long time but deep down he doesn't really want to be one. He can face this head on, in all its inconvenience and its hopelessness.

He calls it by its name in moments like this, mostly, the quieter moments; like now, with Skye sitting on the other chair in his office, designing a mission with him, spending the morning in comfortable partnership, back and forth, doing things that matter. Skye makes him want to make a difference in the world – the least he can do in return is call it love. She's had enough of people giving her less than she deserves and though he is never going to tell her Skye deserves that at least in his own head Coulson does her justice by using the proper name.

He doesn't even feel guilty anymore.

He knows they will never closer than this; colleagues and partners and friends and he is content with that. Well, maybe not content but. He knows how important he is to Skye, she has already proved she would go to hell and back for him and that is enough. He won't ask for more. He won't get frustrated at not being able to _show her_ how much she means to him. He has accepted that and it's still the best relationship he has ever had and is likely to ever have. He is not going to put that in jeopardy and he is not going to hurt Skye because of something which is not her fault.

He's still trying to do better by her.

Because if he thought there was a chance that Skye might feel the same he would take that chance, in a heartbeat.

But there's a reason why he doesn't say anything, why he doesn't move, just stays here, in his Director's chair, watching as Skye explains the exploit to him.

Because she couldn't ever think about him like that.

Could she?

"Or you could just ask, you know," Skye tells him, giving him a sideways look, still focused on her laptop.

She gives his leg a friendly kick and that's when Coulson realizes how close their chairs are in his office and he doesn't know when that happened, _how_ , he has the feeling it has always been this way. She looks up at him.

He focuses on her face, baffled. Was she saying something he didn't catch? Was he really that distracted?

"What?"

Skye hesitates for a second.

"Some times you look at me like you are doing right now, and I know you want to ask me something. So go ahead and ask. The answer is going to be _Yes_."

Coulson stares at her in stunned silence. Could she?

 

**eight**  
He is afraid, again.

It's a different kind of fear, he admits.

"Could you?" he asks.

Skye smiles, pulling their chairs even closer together.

 

**nine**  
He's happy, that is all.

He doesn't mind _happy_ is too inclusive, too definitive and big a word for such a brief moment as this, but this is the closest to it he remembers having felt in a long time, maybe ever.

Skye has him resting under her shoulder, face to the side of her chest, breathing the rich scent of her, her armpit, her breasts, the scent of the tangled bedsheets, of the aftermath of lovemaking. Too tired or too tender or too comfortable to move, the soothing rhythm of Skye's fingers playing gently with his hair. She presses her mouth against his temple and Coulson closes his eyes, concentrating on the warm, delicate feeling that gesture inspires in him. He feels like he'd want to stay in her bed forever and at the same time like he'd like to stand up immediately and start fighting the demons out there in the world, with her, right now. For now he settles for the first impulse. There'd be time to fight against darkness later.

He's happy but that doesn't mean it's uncomplicated.

He has no idea if he has done the right thing telling her.

Maybe it was selfish. Maybe he just wanted to make that feeling of longing and hunger and hopelessness disappear, one way or another.

"You're still thinking way too much," she tells him, running her fingers across his forehead, which is ironic because despite her protestations of impulsiveness Skye is the most careful person he's ever met. They haven't said much since that moment in his office but he can tell she has been afraid too.

He opens his eyes, the walls of Skye's room greeting him. She has put up two large boards where she has stuck all sorts of files and pictures, printed news reports, stuff she's been working on, stuff even he didn't know she had been working on. He smiles at her commitment and how easily she has made the room feel inequivocally hers. He's glad Skye's room was closer. He is glad he's here now.

"But I'm only thinking good stuff," he tells her.

"Good stuff _about me_?" she asks, teasingly, but also needing the reassurance. He lets out a content, reassuring agreement. She runs her nails across his scalp and he moans a bit at the sensation. "Good. So I can stop pining for you already. It was very inconvenient, I felt pathetic."

_Pining?_ Coulson can't help but huff a laugh.

"What?" Skye asks.

He shakes his head.

"Nothing," he tells her, propping himself on one elbow and reaching out to kiss her.

Maybe he was wrong. _Happy_ seems too small a word. He needs to do her justice, after all.


End file.
